Sky launches Now TV box offering Internet TV for under £10

Sky has today launched Now TV, its budget set top box that offers free catch up TV, as well as optional sport and movie add ons, for just £9.99.

There is no subscription fee and the box can connect to any TV, as long as the user has a wireless Internet connection. Currently BBC iPlayer and Demand 5 are available through the service, but 4oD is a glaring omission.

The box may also provide an attractive subscription alternative to sports fans due to its pay as you go sport option, as long as you don't want to watch too much that is.

A Sky Sports day pass will be a rather pricey £9.99. The cheapest Sky subscription with the sports channels available is £43.50 a month, so you will need to choose the four days you watch sport every month very wisely to make a saving.

Flexible Sky Movie subscriptions are also available, the shortest being three months at £8.99 per month, which allows you to watch hundreds of movies on demand, similar to the service offered by Netflix and LoveFilm.

The box also allows access to apps like Facebook and Spotify through a TV via the broadband connection.

Sky predicts that there's currently over 50 million TVs in the UK that are not connected to the Internet and it hopes that their cheap solution will prove attractive to these consumers.

"Until now, unless receiving catch-up as part of a pay TV subscription, consumers have needed to pay tens or even hundreds of pounds to purchase internet-streaming devices to watch catch-up TV on a regular TV. With the new NOW TV Box, for less than a tenner, customers can access the best in catch-up TV," the company said.

Billed as 'smaller than a pub beer mat', the box plugs straight into a TV's HDMI port via a provided cable and connects to the Internet wirelessly.